Old Testament · Poetry and Wisdom · Book 19 of 66

Psalms

Israel’s prayers and praises to the LORD: a hundred and fifty psalms in five books, from Moses’ day to the captivity.

150 chapters
2,461 verses
About 3.3 hours to read

Read Psalms 1 Listen from chapter 1 Ask about Psalms

The Psalms are a hundred and fifty prayers and songs: Scripture given by God, and words addressed to him. Many are tied by their titles to a day in a life, as when David “fled from Absalom his son” (Psalm 3:1) or when “Nathan the prophet came unto him” (51:1). Others speak for the whole people, down to the captives who sat “by the rivers of Babylon” (137:1).

Two psalms stand at the door: Psalm 1 blesses the man whose “delight is in the law of the LORD” (1:2), and Psalm 2 sets the LORD’s anointed king on Zion. The law and the king return throughout. Watch also for the LORD’s mercy, named in every verse of Psalm 136, and for the turn from complaint to praise. Each of the first four books closes with a blessing of the LORD, and the last verse calls on “every thing that hath breath” to praise the LORD (150:6).

Key verse

A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalms 23:1 KJV

The still waters Psalm 23:2

The harp Psalm 33:2

The sun Psalm 19:5

Before you read

Who wrote it: By the psalms’ own titles: David 73, Asaph 12, the sons of Korah 11, Solomon 2, and Moses, Heman and Ethan one each; Psalm 88 carries two names. Fifty name no writer, and the New Testament gives two of these to David (Acts 4:25; Hebrews 4:7).
When it was written: From “A Prayer of Moses the man of God” (90:1), through David’s flight from Saul and from Absalom (57:1; 3:1), to the captivity (137:1). Hippolytus gives the tradition: Esdra, as tradition says, having collected in one volume, after the captivity, the psalms of several.
To whom: Israel at worship: fifty-five titles commit the psalm “To the chief Musician”, and Psalms 120 to 134 are each “A Song of degrees” (120:1).

How Psalms is laid out

5 movements · 533 passages · 2,461 verses

1:1 22:1 23:1 51:10 84:11 90:2 110:1 150:6

11–41 242–72 373–89 490–106 5107–150

Two doors, then David’s prayers

Psalms 1–41 · 616 verses

Two untitled psalms open the book: the blessed man who delights in the law of the LORD, and the LORD’s anointed king on Zion. Every titled psalm after them names David, several from his troubles. Psalm 22 begins “why hast thou forsaken me?”, Psalm 23 follows with the shepherd, and a doxology closes this first book.

41 psalms

The thirsting soul and the king

Psalms 42–72 · 465 verses

The sons of Korah open it, thirsting for God “as the hart panteth after the water brooks.” Psalm 45 sings the king whose throne is for ever. Here the name God largely replaces the LORD: Psalm 53 repeats Psalm 14 that way. Psalm 72 prays for the king’s son, and “the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.”

31 psalms

The sanctuary and David’s crown

Psalms 73–89 · 358 verses

Asaph opens it, envious at “the prosperity of the wicked” until he went into the sanctuary. Psalms 74 and 79 mourn that sanctuary burned and Jerusalem laid on heaps. Psalm 89 recites the LORD’s oath to David, then sees his throne cast down to the ground, and the third doxology follows.

17 psalms

The LORD reigneth

Psalms 90–106 · 321 verses

Moses’ prayer opens it: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Psalms 93, 97 and 99 begin “The LORD reigneth.” Psalm 104 sings creation; 105 and 106 retell Israel’s history, the LORD’s faithfulness and the people’s rebellion, ending with the plea “gather us from among the heathen” and the fourth doxology.

17 psalms

Praise ye the LORD

Psalms 107–150 · 701 verses

It opens with thanks from the redeemed, gathered out of the lands, as the fourth book’s last psalm had prayed. Psalm 110 seats David’s Lord at the LORD’s right hand, Psalm 119 praises the law through the Hebrew alphabet, and fifteen Songs of degrees follow. Psalms 146 to 150 each begin and end “Praise ye the LORD.”

44 psalms

The words Psalms turns on

Three words from its titles, psalm, prayer and praise, and three it keeps returning to: mercy, law and the anointed.

See these words across the whole Bible

What Psalms teaches

chêçêd · mercy

His mercy endureth for ever

The word the KJV renders “mercy” and “lovingkindness”, chêçêd, stands in 127 verses of the Psalms, out of 241 in all Scripture. It is the LORD’s covenant faithfulness, part of the name he proclaimed to Moses (Exodus 34:6–7), and David gives that name back to him: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (103:8). Psalm 136 closes all 26 of its verses with “for his mercy endureth for ever” (136:1–26). When David’s throne falls, Psalm 89 holds the LORD to his sworn mercy: “Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, which thou swarest unto David in thy truth?” (89:49)

tᵉhillâh · praise

From the cry to praise

Many psalms begin where the sufferer stands: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever?” (13:1). The same psalm ends five verses later, “I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me” (13:6). Psalm 22 goes from “why hast thou forsaken me?” to “My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation” (22:25), because “when he cried unto him, he heard” (22:24). The complaint is taken to the God who inhabits “the praises of Israel” (22:3), so lament in the Psalms is already faith, spoken to the one who answers.

mâshîyach · anointed

The LORD and his anointed

Psalm 2 sets out the conflict: the rulers take counsel “against the LORD, and against his anointed” (2:2), and the LORD answers, “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion” (2:6). The anointed is David and his seed for evermore (18:50). Psalm 89 recites the oath, “Thy seed will I establish for ever” (89:4), then finds the throne cast down. Psalm 110 sees a king at the LORD’s right hand who is also “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek” (110:4), though no king of David’s house was allowed to be both (2 Chronicles 26:18).

Christ in Psalms

The risen Lord said that all things must be fulfilled “which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me” (Luke 24:44). The apostles preached them so. Peter read Psalm 16 as David speaking “of the resurrection of Christ” (Acts 2:31), and Paul read Psalm 2’s “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee” of the resurrection too (Acts 13:33). Jesus asked how David, in Psalm 110, could “in spirit call him Lord” (Matthew 22:43) if the Christ were only his son, and Hebrews reads the same psalm of his priesthood (Hebrews 5:6).

On the cross he prayed the Psalms: the first words of Psalm 22 (Matthew 27:46), and at the last Psalm 31:5 (Luke 23:46). Hebrews puts the praise of Psalm 22 in his mouth as well: “I will declare thy name unto my brethren” (Hebrews 2:12).

People

By how many verses name them

39 more are named.

Places

54 named

Map: Psalms 60 and 108 — **Psalms 60 and 108** · 2 more · Map © Biblica Open Bible Maps · CC BY-SA 4.0

Where Psalms reaches

The passages it leans on, and the ones that lean on it

Psalms 18:1 2 Samuel 22:1
The same song of deliverance, under the same heading, in the history of David’s reign.
Psalms 2:7 Acts 13:33 Hebrews 1:5
The decree to the Son, read of the resurrection and of the Son above the angels.
Psalms 22:1 Matthew 27:46 Hebrews 5:7
The cry from the cross, and prayers offered “with strong crying and tears” and heard.
Psalms 110:1 Matthew 22:44 Hebrews 1:13
David’s Lord at the right hand: Jesus’ question to the Pharisees, and the Son above the angels.
Psalms 118:22 Matthew 21:42 Acts 4:11
The stone the builders refused, applied by Jesus to himself and by Peter before the council.

Books Psalms links to most

Cross-references from Psalms into each book · 65 books in all

See every thread

The Church Fathers on Psalms

4,840 quotations from 83 writers before AD 800 · the ten most quoted, in date order

Basil read Psalm 1 as the foundation laid under the whole book.

Like the foundation in a house, the keel in a ship and the heart in a body, so is [Psalm 1 as a] brief introduction to the whole structure of the Psalms.

Basil of Caesarea 379 · Homilies On The Psalms 10:3 (ps 1) · on Psalms 1:1

Hippolytus records the Hebrew division into five books, each closed by a blessing.

… the Hebrews also divided the Psalter into five books, so that it might be another Pentateuch. … For they judged that each psalm closing with the words, "Blessed be the Lord, Amen, amen," formed the conclusion of a book.

Hippolytus of Rome 235 · Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture - On the Psalms · on Psalms 1:1

Jerome kept it one volume, as the apostles named it, and took its writers from the titles.

And we, the authority of the Hebrews being followed, and especially of the Apostles, who always in the New Testament name the Book of Psalms, have asserted one volume. We also testify of all the authors who are set down in the titles of their psalms … which Ezra compiled into one volume.

Jerome 420 · on Psalms 1:1

Augustine heard Christ and his Church praying the Psalms with one voice.

Christ, then, and the Church, that is, whole Christ, the Head and the Body, says here, "I will love You, O Lord, My strength" [Psalm 18:1]. I will love You, O Lord, by whom I am strong.

Augustine of Hippo 430 · Exposition on Psalm 18 · on Psalms 18:1

Matthew Henry · 443 sections on Psalms“The psalmist begins with the character and condition of a godly man, that those may first take the comfort of that to whom it belongs.”

Keep studying

Articles

Book introductionUnderstanding the Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible Devotional · Psalms 106:32Put Down the Rod Meaning mapWhere Psalms’s verses sit among the whole Bible’s Ask AIAsk a question about Psalms